RESEARCH REPORT RES 000 23 1312

Outside the Atom:

The Public Understanding of Nuclear Science and Armament

in India

Raminder Kaur Kahlon

1. Background

This research concerns public perceptions of nuclear science and armament

in India and its ramifications in popular culture. It is based both on preliminary

research funded by a British Academy Small Grant when I was a

Simon/Marks Fellow at the University of Manchester (2002-3), and a period of

extensive fieldwork conducted during this period of research (Feb 2006-Jan

2007). The research considers the way nuclear issues pervade peoples' lives

in contemporary India. With the help of ethnographic fieldwork, the research

reassesses nuclear issues so as they are do not remain simply the concern of

nation-states and political parties , but are seen to be intricately entwined with

notions of self, community and imaginings of 'national' and 'international'

communities. This is complemented with a focus on how nuclear debates

have percolated into aspects of Indian popular culture, such as fiction, drama,

film, and their reception. There is no anthropological literature providing socio-

cultural perspectives on the subject for the case of India, although there are a

couple of monographs on ethnographic yet quite specific nuclear topics for the

case of the USA.'

During the early course of fieldwork in Mumbai, I was invited to a meeting on

an up-and coming nuclear plant in Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu. I realised

' Paul Boyer (1985) By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn ofthe Atomic Age, New York: Pantheon; Hugh Gusterson (1996) Nuclear Rites: A WeaponsLaboratory at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley: University of California Press; John Masco(2006) The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Pot-Cold War New Mexico,Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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that the research would be enhanced if 1 was to document this crucial and

dynamic phase in people's lives in the midst of what is intended to be Asia's

largest nuclear site. Rather than instigating questions on nuclear issues

myself, they were all around me for me to record and analyse. Moreover,

people in Kanyakumari District next to the site of the upcoming nuclear power

plant had prior familiarity with issues to do with radiation. This was by way of

the natural (background) radiation that emanates from the monazite minerals

washed down from the mountains by the rivers into the sea. Monazite is a

mineral that contains the alpha-emitter, thorium, which has been earmarked

for the third phase of India's nuclear ambitions to reprocess plutonium fuel in

a Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam near Chennai. Coastal

sandmining was practiced in the district by government and private

undertakings. People in the vicinity had become concerned about the health

risks of mining radioactive material. They were hypersensitised to incidents of

cancer, problems with fertility and pregnancy and intellectual and physical

disabilities, some of which could have been due to the natural radiation in the

region. I made three further trips (for a period ranging between 2-9 weeks for

each visit) to Nagercoil, the capital of Kanyakumari District in order to pursue

this research with the help of local research assistants. Due to earlier

research in Mumbai and the work of another research assistant based in the

city, I kept abreast of my aims and objectives for the fieldwork site of Mumbai

as well.

2. Objectives

(i) Nuclear issues from the viewpoint of local communities rather than states

were considered enabling a move away from conventional top-down

approaches to nuclearisation. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in

Mumbai and Kanyakumari District focusing on people's memories of India's

nuclear history, their views on nuclear power, weapons and radiation, and

their perception of risk in relation to conflicts, terrorism and nuclear accidents

etc. (see below).

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(ii) New material on how nuclear debates percolated into aspects of popular

culture was collected including contemporary films, magazines and comics as

well as live recordings made on street and cultural performances which

invoked the nuclear theme . I re-evaluated contemporary popular films with the

intention to highlight nuclear themes as part of their many constituent parts.

Through my discussions with spectators who I accompanied to film shows, I

analysed the use of the nuclear missile in popular films.

This objective was also explored historically through archival research, where

new perspectives as well as original material on the atomic theme from the

mid-1940s were collated . In the 1940s, films with an atomic theme were

mainly produced in the USA and consumed in India. This trend to embrace

foreign film productions on the theme continued to this day where films such

as Atomic Twister were showcased by my informants in Kanyakumari District

to show people how dangerous a nuclear accident could be. The BBC

produced docudrama , Chernobyl, also managed to find its way to the area

through one of my informants obtaining a copy of it on his visit to a conference

in the Netherlands.

(iii) I have presented a detailed picture of the history and place of . nuclear

debates , concerns and issues in the lives of Indian urban communities

through conferences , seminars , articles and book chapters. The research also

extended to rural contexts as my investigation led to considering fishing

communities who lived near the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant.

(iv) The research identified key issues that underpin opinion on nuclear

development in South Asia : in Mumbai, the significance of patriotism, an

uninterrupted supply of power, development , and a 'strong India' was

repeatedly mentioned ; in Kanyakumari District , concerns about radiation,

disease, the local impact of the Indo-US deal and an intransigent 'nuclear

state ' were paramount . I also considered themes in relation to the history of

public debates about nuclear weapons in Europe and the USA as with my

comparison of western and Indian movies on nuclear themes (see Nominated

Output 1) and for my analysis of ' atomic heroes ' in children' s comics, where

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characters such as the 'atomic hero' Parmanu presented an indigenisation of

the stylised action-packed aesthetics of US produced comics such as

Spiderman and Batman.

Methods

The methods in the research consisted of archival, ethnographic and textual

analyses. The archival content was mainly through a consideration of how the

atom bomb entered into public knowledge and how it was received in mid-

1940s Bombay throughout its population and popular culture. Material was

collected from archives and other documentary sources eg SARAI (New

Delhi), the Centre for Education and Documentation (Mumbai), the Asiatic

Society Library (Mumbai); and for Kanyakumari District, the Conservation of

Nature Trust library (Nagercoil). Contemporary media was researched for

issues to do with nuclear science and armament, and analysed and archived

accordingly.

The ethnographic aspects were largely to do with long-term fieldwork,

participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with residents on

discussions of nuclear issues over a period of a year 2006-7. Ethnographic

data was collected about families and household settings in the standard way

and interviews conducted with scientists, environmentalists, activists,

academics, journalists, NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) workers

amongst others in Mumbai, New Delhi and in Kanyakumari District. Meetings

and events around nuclear issues were attended as and when they

happened: for instance, a Peace festival in Mumbal, a public hearing in Tamil

Nadu, and the performances of a Nagercoil-based cultural/theatre troupe

were recorded and analysed. Some of these photographs and recordings

were copied for the benefit of informants. Photographs and video recordings

were taken of events, meetings, some interviews, and other relevant sites and

happenings. Footage was also collected to make a small documentary on the

Koodankulam nuclear plant for Indian viewers with the collaboration of a

Nagercoil-based writer - however this has not yet materialised

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A health survey was conducted by my informants based in Nagercoil,

Kanyakumari District to consider the relations between actual radiation

readings and health problems for residents. This entailed questionnaire work

on health with householders in three nearby villages, radiation readings and

the collation of these results into a comparative survey. I also got involved

with the survey from its inception to the end and wrote about it as an

'ethnography of a survey' which, to my knowledge, has not been attempted

before (see Nominated Output 2).

The textual analyses focused on films, print media and comics to do with the

nuclear theme available in Mumbai, some of which were also pursued

ethnographically in terms of their reception, Film screenings were arranged in

Mumbai and Nagercoil and reception studies conducted with a number of the

spectators. This part of the research also included my writing up of scripts in

English language films on nuclear issues to enable Tamil translation for my

informants who wanted more audiences to view the films.

Results

Overall, the research compared the media-saturated capital of commerce,

Mumbai, with an area where a large-scale nuclear project is located, the

Koodankulam Nuclear Power Project. Region was a major factor - those in

the vicinity of a nuclear development were most conscientised against the

idea. Others embraced nuclearisation because it meant that India 'could

remain strong' and the 'clock cannot be turned back now' now that India had

nuclear weapons: they could not denuclearise they argued, yet they also had

a 'not in my backyard' orientation in that their view would become more

ambivalent if a nuclear plant was to be built near their homes. The nature and

effects of radiation were better understood in areas where nuclear issues

were already discussed and contested. In Kanyakumari District people

wanted to learn about and spread as much information about the nuclear

industries, radiation and possible hazards. In Mumbai, ideas about radiation

were somewhat hazy, some suggesting that it was not as bad as the (visible)

pollution from vehicles and factories. Overall, the data reveals that the

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majority of my informants in Mumbai were either pro-nuclear or ambivalent;

the majority of informants in Kanyakumari District were either sceptical of or

against India's nuclearisation. In order to mitigate over-generalisations, I

chose to focus on detailed life histories and profiles of ten people in both

regions which I then reduced to a total of seven in my written analyses. Each

site of fieldwork raised different yet related perspectives on the nuclear

subject which I enumerate below.

A. Mumbai

1. The coming of the atomic age in the mid-1940s defined people's

sentiments and opinions about modernity, science and the new international

world order led by the USA at the helm and the growth of USSR as a

counterforce in the early years of Cold War. Contrary to popular

understanding, the channelling of nuclear issues into India's national remit

was not immediate even though this is the narrative that the nation has

bequeathed to itself in its post-independence avatar. Selective erasure has

meant that more quirky, idiosyncratic, ambivalent and negative views of

atomic power articulated immediately after the dropping of the bomb have

been sidelined in dominant histories of the nation. Archival research provided

material that acted as a significant corrective to this erasure of history by

focusing on the years between 1945-8. The data revealed, for instance,

Jawaharlal Nehru's and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's knee-jerk reactions

against atomic developments as another example of the 'evils of the west' and

another reason to promote non-violence. It demonstrated Nehru's pivotal role

in trying to quell the rising antagonisms of Cold War politics. Rather than

remaining quiet as is the official view, the research accounted for Mohandas

Karamchand Gandhi's attempt to propel the forces of atma (soul) than of the

'atom'. It also highlighted the nuclear scientist's, Homi Bhabha's view that the

atom bomb was a welcome development otherwise there would have been

many more war casualties, amongst numerous other narratives left out of the

national register.

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2. The atom bomb and the science it was associated with, created a new

space in fictional and imaginative realms worldwide, a space that could best

be described as 'schizoid'. Future worlds became either utopic possibilities or

dystopic purgatories depending upon topical affairs and the predilection of the

individual. Sometimes, the extreme polarity of the two possibilities created

confusion and uncertainty. A striking example of this schizoid territory is the

'gallows humour' that accompanied atomic themes , combining both the comic

and the tragic in one fell swoop. The research uncovered a variety of cultural

productions in India with which to explore the entry of the atomic icon in mid-

1940s popular culture. These included not only films produced overseas

(mainly in the US) and watched in Bombay's auditoria to mixed reception; but

also a film produced by Wadiatone, Atom Bomb (1947) along with several

examples of early science fiction produced by Indians inspired by the

possibilities of atomic science.

From what had been a shocking entry into human consciousness emerged a

culture that gradually reproduced the imaginary energies of the atom bomb in

a variety of fictional, documentary and commercial enterprises. This is not to

say that the shock value of the atom bomb had totally dissipated. Moral

invective still attached to the bomb, as is clear from the recorded commentary

of Congress politicians and their incensed views of the US conducting nuclear

tests in the Bikini Atolls from 1946. However, simultaneously, the atom bomb

and related imagery filtered their way into all manner of cultural productions

including fiction, advertisements, docudramas and documentaries. Eventually

with time, the visual imagery of the 'mushroom cloud' and its sublime

aesthetic overcame the bomb ' s sense of destruction . When images became

widespread, the atom's bomb power began to loose its ethical moorings and

become part of an economy of visual signs . The atom bomb and related ideas

of unsurpassable strength were reined in with commercial enterprises to

advertise powerful and strong commodities such as cleaning fluids,

detergents and medicine such as 'Atom Bomb Pain Balm ' and 'Argotone

Nasal Drops' perched prominently in front of a representation of the

'mushroom cloud' in Hiroshima. Such phenomena signalled the domestication

of the atom bomb where ideas to do with the powerful , majestic, and a host of

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other superlative associations quickly became part of popular parley: for

instance, after his assassination , even Gandhi was described in somewhat

contradictory ways - if not an `atom bomb' himself in the metaphorical sense,

he was 'more powerful than atom bomb'.

3. The research provided an overview of nuclear establishments in

contemporary Bombay and their place in the public imaginary. It looked at the

worlds of nuclear scientists in the city and then considered the other side with

a focus on the comparatively less powerful, yet no less vocal, network of

activists, intellectuals and cultural workers who oppose India's nuclearisation

- either in terms of its weapons programme alone or along with the nuclear

power industry as a whole. These made for what I described as a 'contested

arena of nuclear truths'.

4. The research also considered the layered texture of opinions on the nuclear

issue amongst, for want of a better phrase, ordinary people's lives - that is,

amongst those who would neither describe themselves as from the nuclear

establishment, political elites or activist circles. I was interested in outlining to

what extent nuclear issues entered into people's life world of experiences in

Mumbai. I considered their views and ideas about nuclear power and

weapons, the nation and science, their fears and perception of risks, and the

environment and radiation. However, investigations of how nuclear views

configured themselves with respect to gender, age, religious/ethnic identity,

and class/caste were not straightforward. Views were not just contingent on

social position, but more significantly the articulation of knowledge - that is, to

what extent people knew about the nuclear and related industries. The main

generalisation on social positioning that could be formulated from the data is

political orientation: those with a left wing bias tended to be against India's

nuclearisation, but even here views splintered in terms of those who wanted

India to have nuclear power but not weapons, and those who wanted total

denuclearisation.

In order to manage the variety of views and opinions, I focused on the lives of

four people from different walks of life relating their views on nuclear issues to

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formative aspects of their lives. They included an architect (who had also

designed some nuclear power plants ), a Science teacher , a community

worker, and a receptionist in a small business . They ranged from lower middle

class to middle class backgrounds and represented different points on the

spectrum of views.

5. I focused on the stories in Indian popular movies to explore perspectives

on, and perceptions of nuclear issues in contemporary cinema. With a focus

on films such as Hero: Love Story of a Spy and Fanaa: Destroyed in Love, I

provide a description of their plots and main themes as well as their reception

in Mumbai. Notably film, narratives enabled a means by which the dyad of

nationalism and nuclear weapons could be (but ultimately was not)

undermined (see Nominated Output 1).

7. The research also revealed a spate of 'superhero comic books' popular

amongst 8-16 year old children across India. Many of these strips invoked

nuclear themes . The company responsible for creating this new superhero

genre in a mixture of English , Hindi and other vernacular languages is Raj

Comics . The main heroes in the Raj universe are Nagraj, Triranga , Parmanu,

Doga , Goldheart, Ashvaraj , Robodog , Inspector Steel, Yoshada, Shaktimaan,

and the superheroine , Shakti , read as much by boys as girls - ' a heroine for

girls', a nurse by day but when she hears of a woman in trouble , she turns into

a wild-haired Shakti . Her mythological lineage with Hindu goddesses in their

shakti or powerful form is clear . She was created in 1998 and has some debt

to the nuclear tests of that year in the Rajasthan deserts of Pokhran,

codenamed Shakti.

After an overview of these superheroes and the indigenisation of western

counterparts such as Spiderman and Batman , I focused in.particular on the

comic narratives of the superhero , Parmanu , literally meaning ' atomic power'.

As the publicity goes, he is 'the Atomic powered wonder man of India'. With

his double identity as both police inspector and superhero : ' he fells his

enemies with atomic bolts fired from chest and wrist gadgets. He reels out

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atomic rope from his wrist band gadget. His belt is many splendoured

gadgetry marvel which helps him to telemart atomize and reduce to any

desired level'.2 Through my interviews with the Chief Illustrator, Anupam

Sinha, and young readers, I noted how the comics stand at the crossroads

between western and Indian, modern and yet timeworn ideas about gender,

family, conduct and nation.

B. Kanyakumari District

1. The plan to build a nuclear power plant in Koodankulam was first initiated in

1988 under the Congress leader, Rajiv Gandhi's government. After resistance

from local people, the assassination of the prime minister and a global volte

face on nuclear power following the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster,

the project was shelved. The initiative was picked up again in the late 1990s

when in 1998, the then Indian Prime Minister, H. D. Deve Gowda, and the

Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, signed another agreement to commission a

detailed project report in 1999. After settling on payments and what was to be

done with the spent fuel, the BJP leader, Atul Bihari Vajpai and the Russian

President, Vladimir Putin, brought the pact to life in November 2002, and the

project began construction in the following year.

This development in southern India triggered a chain of reactions in the

region, some uncertain, some accommodating, but mostly suspicious and

critical. Indeed, it could be asserted that the decision to build a nuclear power

plant in the area indicated a sea change in people's awareness of themselves

regionally, nationally and internationally. The residents of Koodankulam and

Kanyakumari District were compelled to join a nuclear drama whether they

wanted to or not. This part of the research focused on these dramas from the

point of view of people rather than policy, and locality rather than national or

international treaties.

2Seehttp://www.raicomics.com/ioomfelindex. ph p?o ption=com content&view=article&id=731&[temid=142 . Accessed December 14, 2007.

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1. Firstly, I provided a backdrop of the geographical , demographic and

sociological features of the district before dwelling on the ' radioactive

underbelly ' of this region . The 'radioactive underbelly' applied not just to

activities surrounding the up-and-coming nuclear power plant , but also the

high levels of background radiation in the area and government and private

mining of sand for minerals along the coastline . The region along with the

contiguous shoreline of Kerala : 'contains the world ' s highest level of natural

radioactivity in a densely populated area '.3 I considered the impact of India's

nuclear flagship enterprise in the region with the construction of the

Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant and allied industries, an arena of material

and discursive developments on the nuclear theme . They presented

perspectival constructs in an uneven field of consent, negotiation and

contestation , and may be described as the 'nuclearscape' of the region. This

follows Appadurai 's (1996 ) proposal of five global disjunctive cultural flows

which he terms scapes -- ethno-, finance-, media-, techno- and ideoscapes.4

According to Appadurai ' s logic , anything to do with nuclear issues would

largely fall under technoscapes . But in this case, the nuclear industries

straddled a whole range of terrains - from the politics and economics of the

enterprise to discursive strategies to promote and resist the plans, down to

the impact it may have on peoples ' everyday lives in terms of the ingestion of

food and water- Knowledge about nuclear issues affected people ' s thoughts,

conduct, diet and politics . Radiation constituted a lived reality not an abstract

idea initiated by media discussions - it was quite literally in the air, an invisible

presence inscribed in their presents and futures. The formidable presence of

this nuclearscape made this a crucial peg with which people in the vicinity had

to re-imagine and reorientate their lives.

2. Nuclear technology may be heralded as a great advance by the nation-

state , but for the majority of people living near nuclear power plants, they

signalled the onset of widespread paranoia and uncertainty. The research

3 Forster, Lucy, Peter Forster, Sabine Lutz-Bonengal, Horst Willkomm and Bernd Brinkmann,(2002 ) ' Natural Radioactivity and human mitochondrial DNA mutations ', Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences , 99: 1-5, p.4 Arjun Appadurai ( 1996 ) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization,Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.

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considered the history of local struggle and reactions from people to the

nuclear industries in the district as soon as the news was made public in the

late 1980s . This included considering the output of fictional' writers and

cultural/theatre performances on the nuclear theme.

Whether it was through concerns about air , water and sea, all people in the

region would be affected by the nuclear plant . No one was protected from it.

So to maintain a difference between middle and lower classes , or as in Partha

Chatterjee 's (2001) term, civil and political society was untenable .5 The middle

classes did not operate in a different sphere to subaltern populations when it

came to organising against the plant. More often than not, activists were the

people - fishermen whose livelihoods were at stake , farmers whose water

may be diverted to the plant , women who feared miscarriages and giving birth

to (intellectually and/or physically) disabled children , and the public in general

who worried about the increase in cancer in a region where background

radiation was already high. Sustained campaigns to raise awareness had

been successful in that virtually everyone knew about the pros and cons of

living in the vicinity of a plant, and that ultimately, there would be more 'cons'

than 'pros '. Whether literate or illiterate, many had heard about radiation,

known locally as khadirveechu, literally meaning 'ray application'. Even if not

everyone fully understood the phenomena, they had a good sense of its

dangerous consequences.

3. On October 6, 2006 a public hearing with the Nuclear Power Corporation of

India Limited ( NPCIL ) was scheduled to be held in the Tirunelveli District

Collector's office in order to swiftly pass the construction of reactors 3-6 with

as little publicity as possible . Nevertheless , word quickly got round. and in the

space of a day, about 6-700 people turned up, much to the NPCIL ' s surprise.

The occasion offered a rare glimpse of nuclear authorities coming to face the

local communities , and revealed their-foiled ambitions to convince the public

of the advantages of having more reactors at the Koodankulam plant. No

5 Partha Chatterjee (2001 ) 'On Civil and Political Society in Post-colonial Democracies' inSudipta Kaviraj and Sunii Khifnani, eds., Civil Society. History and Possibilities , Cambridge:Cambridge University Press , pp. 165-178

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public hearing was ever held for reactors 1 and 2 , so from that perspective

too, this was as one person put it, 'a once in a lifetime opportunity where the

people will meet the nuke plant people'. Public hearings had been made

mandatory for large-scale development projects by the 1994 Notification of

the Environmental Protection Act (along with an Environmental Impact

Assessment report ). But in 2001 , the Director of Ministry of Environment and

Forests had declared that there was no need to conduct a public hearing for

the Koodankulam reactors 1 and 2 which , albeit shelved for a decade, were

initially cleared in 1989 - that is before the 1994 Notification was

promulgated.6

The public hearing represented a glimpse of the workings of the nuclear state

arm-in-arm with the all-seeing panoptican in the form of Police , Intelligence

agencies and administrative staff entering into a field of political forces

motivated by social actors with varying vested interests (farmers , fisherfolk,

priests, conservationists , political objectors ). An instrument of modern

governance in the performance of the state ' s democratic obligations quickly

turned into a gladiatorial match between the supposed neutrality of the

rational -critical sphere desired by the nuclear authorities, and the claims of

local communities who hoped for justice and recompense from a fear of

contamination, bodily deformations, and loss of resources and livelihoods due

to the nuclear plant. I considered the drama of these political forces in terms

of revised theories of state and society, as well the representation of the event

in the media the following day.'

4. The data revealed numerous anxieties that have plagued peoples' minds.

In the process, I assessed the viability of theories of risk in this developing

6 R Ramesh (2002 ) ' Listen to the Voice of Geology: Possible Implications of the RecentGeological Events of the Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu on the Safety Profile of theKudankulam Nuclear Power Plant', Coimbatore : Doctors for Safer Environment.With reference to Veena Das and Deborah Poole , eds. (2004 ) Anthropology in the Margins

of the State. Santa Fe : School of American Research Press, Philip Abrams ( 1988 ) 'Notes onthe Difficulty of Studying the State.' Journal of Historical Sociology 1: 58-89; Akhil Gupta(1995) 'Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics and theImagined State ', American Ethnologist 22(2): 375-402; Thomas Blom Hansen and FinnStepputat eds . (2001 ) States of Imagination : Ethnographic Explorations of the PostcolonialState , Durham : Duke University Press.

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area of south India where development of factories ( more jobs) and towns

(more roads and municipal services ) were desired but not a nuclear power

plant.8 I also considered the local implications of international treaties

between the US and India in light of the Indo-US deal (discussions which

were initiated in 2005 and later passed in the Indian government after its

ratification in the US senate in 2008). The data revealed people ' s perceptions

of the deal in the area , how they thought it would impact upon their lives and

what they would prefer to see as an alternative ' people-friendly ' scenario to

the power requirements of the nation of India. I profiled three people from

different walks of life, showing to what extent the prospects of Asia ' s largest

nuclear plant played in their lives . This included a fisherman , a woman from a

farming background and a school teacher who all had variant perspectives

depending upon their life -stage , personal ambitions and concerns about their

families.

5. I provided a processual account of my informants' attempt to do

quantitative work on health and radiation in nearby villages , appreciating that

statistics and `hard facts' held an ideological grip on people's worldviews. The

pursuit for numerical readings offered the chance of self-empowerment and a

means of forging ahead with the belief that high levels of radioactivity could

damage people 's lives and the environment (see Nominated Output 2).

6. One of the impacts of this survey was the wider dissemination of the view

that genetic deformities could be one visible effect of high radiation exposure.

A locally based doctor was already one advocate of this view. She had

noticed a high rate of miscarriage and abortions in these high radiation zones

as well as a proportionately high incident of Mental Retardation (or MR, the

local appellation ) amongst the children who survived . Evidence suggested

that radiation could be one factor amongst many, often unknown and/or

speculative , which has led to the growth of MR. Other factors proposed for

intellectual disability included consanguinity (cross-cousin marriages ) to keep

8 With reference to Ulrich Beck (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans MarkRitter , London : Sage ; John Tulloch and Deborah Lupton (2003 ) Risk and Everyday Life,London: Sage; Pat Caplan (2002) Risk Revisited, London: Pluto.

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property within the family, and late births due to delayed marriage owing to

women's imperative to save for a dowry.

In my own investigation as to the links between radiation and MR, I became a

regular visitor to a home for people with special needs. I wanted to find out

whether any of the residents had come from coastal villages where radiation

levels were very high. In comparison to (B5) above which prioritised numbers

over contexts, here I considered the social contexts of people with MR in

terms of social attitudes and perceptions of them as well as a focus on their

lives in a particular home in an attempt to get close to their lived realities and

cultural worlds following the insights of Klotz.9 The data also revealed a good

deal of social prejudice and a prevalent fear that there could be more

incidents of MR when the reactors go critical.

Activities

I helped organise two 'seminars' (the local appellation for an afternoon-long

symposium ) in the site of my fieldwork. The speakers in this seminar

investigated the relationships between the environment, radiation and

children's health.

Presentations:

• 'Bordering the Impossible: The Crisis of Identity and Nuclear

Nationalism in Contemporary Indian Cinema' at a symposium, The

Film Scene: Cinema, the Arts and Social Change, University of Hong

Kong, April 2006.

• 'Health and Radiation in Kanyakumari District' at 'Health and

Environment' conference, Trivandrum, October 2006

9Jani Klotz (2003) 'The Culture Concept', Paper presented to Disability Studies and ResearchInstitute (DSaRI) Symposium, "Disability at the Cuffing Edge: A colloquium to examine theimpact on theory, research and professional practice" University of Technology, Sydney,12/9103 http://www.transforminQ.cultures.uts.edu.au/pdfs/new paths klotz.pdf . AccessedJanuary 14, 2008.

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• `Revisiting the Civil and the Political' at the British Association for

South Asian Studies Annual Conference, Leicester, March 2008.

• 'Whither Apocalypse? The Atomic Age and Popular Indian Cinema' at

Indian Cinema Symposium, University of Westminster, July 2008.

• 'Ethics and the Inevitability of Bias in Research on Nuclear Issues in

India', European Association of Social Anthropologists Annual

Conference, Ljubljana, August 2008.

Seminars:

'A Secret Public Hearing' at:

(i) University of Sussex , February 2008

(ii) Goldsmiths, March 2008.

Outputs

1. 'Gods, Bombs and the Social Imaginary' in South Asian Cultures of the

Bomb: Atomic Publics and the State in India and Pakistan, ed Itty Abraham,

(Indiana University Press, 2009).

2. 'Nuclear Revelations' and chapter written with William Mazzarella, 'Thinking

Censorship in South Asia:' in Censorship in South Asia, eds Kaur and

Mazzarella (Indiana University Press, 2009).

3. Book manuscript Atomic Bombay: Public Representations and Perceptions

of Nuclear Issues in Bombay, submitted to University of California Press.

4. Book manuscript Outside the Atom: Public Representations and

Perceptions of Nuclear Issues in South India, submitted to Duke University

Press.

Impacts

The survey and seminar on health and radiation with which I was involved

inspired a local Non-Governmental Organisation to conduct a district-wide

survey. Reports were also made in the local media. A report was written by

the project organisers to which I contributed. Many people were sent copies of

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the report in India, including to a representative of Children in Need South

Asia, who was particularly interested on radiation levels and the incidents of

Mental Retardation and other problems amongst children.

The research kept interested parties in Mumbai and New Delhi informed of

activities in Kanyakumari District as there was little reported in the national

media.

Future Research Priorities:

• To keep updated on issues around the Koodankulam Nuclear Power

Plant in Kanyakumari District.

• To pursue in more detail the health risks associated with radiation and

peoples' perceptions of this.

• To study the appearance of nuclear issues in Indian popular culture

from the 1950s to the 1980s.

• To develop a comparative focus on nuclear issues with other contexts

with the help of an international workshop followed by an edited

volume.

Ethics

As the research focused on nuclear issues prevalent in the public arena, no

serious ethical considerations have arisen in the course of this work. All

informants' confidentiality has been respected in accordance with the

appropriate professional codes of conduct and accepted guidelines (see

attached). Anonymity has been retained in published outlets for individuals

and sometimes also their professional affiliations especially if they were

against nuclear plants. However, in cases where peoples' names were

already in the public domain as with newspaper articles or public reports, I

have not altered the names. When dealing with people with intellectual

disabilities, I always got permission, guidance and supervision by the director

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before proceeding to do anything in the Home. I made most of my contacts

with informants through networks already established in Mumbai since my last

period of long-term ethnography in Maharashtra in the mid-1990s. In

Kanyakumari District, my initial port of call were organisers of a meeting who

introduced me to several other people in the region.

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